


Bless the Broken Road

by Tempestas_D_Uzu



Series: Uzu's Unconnected One-Shots [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts, Cannon Divergent, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Genderbend, Ignores everything after AoU, Mention of OC, Mentions of Sex, Might Get A Sequel, One Shot, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Russian terms of endearment, Somebody dies, Spoilers, The Deathly Hallows, but then they don't, fem!Harry Potter - Freeform, inspired by a song, music lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4193868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempestas_D_Uzu/pseuds/Tempestas_D_Uzu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her resolve crumbled in the face of Pietro Maximoff's scruffy good looks and warm blue eyes, and she found herself falling for another person who would be doomed to die for her selfishness.</p><p>Edited: Mon, December 25 2017</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bless the Broken Road

_**I set out on a narrow way many years ago / Hoping I would find true love along the broken road6** _

 

At twenty one, Juliet Potter was _tired_.

She was tired of her fame, of the Wizarding World, of the expectations, the press - she was tired of life in general. She had ended the War, had defeated Voldemort and his Death Eaters. She was the _Savior_ of a world that would change their opinion of her at the drop of a hat (as demonstrated in her Second, Fourth, and Fifth years).

To many she was the Girl-Who-Lived, the Woman-Who-Conquered. To others, she was the next Dark Lady.

She was sick and tired of it.

So, at twenty one, Juliet Potter ran from the world she had once called home, a place that had once been her sanctuary.

She never looked back.

 

_**But I got lost a time or two / Wiped my brow and kept pushing through** _

 

At twenty three, Pietro Maximoff was angry, and he had been for a very long time.

Ever since his parents had been murdered by Tony Stark (directly, or indirectly - Pietro didn't care, it had still been Stark's name printed on the side of the bomb that had taken his parents from him.) the only thing he had lived for was his sister, and the hope that one day his country would be free.

Pietro loved his sister, she was the only thing he had left, he would follow her to the end of the earth, and would protect her to his last breath.

So at twenty three, when Wanda returned to their small, run-down apartment with the news of a new neighbor, Pietro was suspicious - was this another one of SHIELD's attempts to silence them? Did they send one of their assassins to keep an eye on them? Would she be a threat to his baby sister?

He needed answers, and he knew just the way to get them.

 

**_I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you_ **

 

The blue door with peeling paint swung open with a _creeeaaak_ , and Pietro found himself staring at a tiny woman with a mass of black curls, cream-toned skin, and the brightest green eyes he had ever seen before in his life.

She looked small, fragile, and broken. There was something dark and sad in her other-worldly eyes, bony shoulders were hunched as she peered suspiciously around her door, and Pietro found his former aggression withering before the pixie-like woman in front of him.

The fae of a woman blinked up at him with large bottle-green eyes, full lips parted in surprise. "Oh- ah... Hello." Her voice was accented, most likely British, but with a faint Scottish burr underlining it. She obviously had not been expecting company.

"Hello." Pietro offered awkwardly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I- ah - My name is Pietro, my sister, Wanda, and I are your neighbors. I wanted to welcome you to the building."

She smiled, eyes lighting up with hesitant excitement, and Pietro felt his cheeks burn lightly. "Juliet." The pixie-woman said, shifting aside. "Would you like to join me for tea, Pietro?"

Pietro dipped his head, his own smile lifting the corner of his lips. "I would love to."

 

_**Every long lost dream led me to where you are** _

 

Sokovia was small, crime-ridden, and poor, and the very last place anyone would think to look for Juliet Potter, Lady of the Families Potter and Black, and Savior of the Wizarding World ( _idiots_ ). She purchased a tiny apartment in a rundown building, fully intent on becoming the resident hermit.

But that was until Pietro Maximoff had waltzed into her life.

The young man was tall and muscular, with broad-shoulders and a trim waist. His chocolate brown hair was shaggy and carried a bit of a wave, while his eyes were a pale blue, and combined with the faint stubble on his chin, Juliet was not afraid to admit that she found the man very attractive, in a scruffy kind of way.

Juliet didn't know what it was about him that urged her to invite him in for tea that day, and every day after, but she found herself growing close to the tall Sokovian and his twin sister. Wanda became something of an older sister that she had always wanted, and Pietro - she wasn't completely confident in the growing feelings she held for the blue-eyed Maximoff, which was no longer purely aesthetic, but something more.

The last person she had felt these feelings for had been killed. Everyone she loved died, and Juliet had learned that long ago. She didn’t want the something more to happen again. She didn't want to lose another person she loved.

But her resolve crumbled in the face of Pietro Maximoff's scruffy good looks and warm blue eyes, she found solace with his witty humour and rolling, Sokovian drawl, and she found herself falling for another person who would be doomed to die for her selfishness.

 

_**Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars Pointing me on my way into your loving arms** _

 

"How was the latest rally?"

Pietro barely looked up from the dark tea in front of him, watching as ripples spread towards the center each time he tapped a finger against the pale china. "It was..." He paused, unsure of how to express his thoughts to the younger woman across from him, who was watching him with bottle-green eyes. Finally, he sighed, "A man approached us today. He offered us the tools to finally free our country."

Juliet's brows furrowed as she sipped from her own china cup, however she did not speak, and Pietro was thankful for his friend(companion?lover?)'s silent support.

"Wanda and I said yes." He tightening his grip on the fragile cup cradled in his hands. "We were one of the many who did. We leave at the end of the month."

Pietro had known Juliet for nearing on a year now, and they had grown closer then he had originally thought they would. He had fallen for her ethereal looks, her intelligence and kindness, and her witty banter; Wanda had urged him many times to act on this attraction, to see where they could go. But Pietro hadn't wanted to ruin what they already had in a pursuit of getting something more, he had been content in seeing her happy - in making her happy.

Juliet had always carried a deep sadness, one that Pietro wanted gone. He wanted the pixie-like woman safe and secure - something that he could not offer, not while SHIELD still ruled Sokovia with an iron fist in the guise of 'peace keeping', anyway.

"I'm not going to say anything about this, Pietro." Juliet said quietly, placing her cup down to look him in the eye. "What you want to do with your life is completely up to you. But I want you to be _careful_."

It was another thing he loved about her. Pietro had lived his life listening to no one but himself (and occasionally his sister), he did not take well to being ordered around and told what to do. Juliet understood this, and while she stated her opinion, she never tried to sway his decisions, all she wanted was for him to be careful in what he chose to do.

He smiled, "Don't worry, _Котёнок_ [1]." Pietro winked, and Juliet rolled her eyes, "I'm _always_ careful."

His dark-haired fae snorted, "You?"

Pietro shot her a faux-affronted glance, "I'll have you know, I am the most careful person you will ever meet."

Juliet raised a mocking eyebrow, a smirk curling her full lips. " _Really_?" She drawled, "I would have thought it was Wanda."

Pietro puffed up arrogantly, before grinning in pride when Juliet dissolved into helpless laughter.

 

_**This much I know is true / That God blessed the broken road / That led me straight to you** _

 

At twenty two, Juliet Potter watched the two people she had grown to see as home walk away to a future she could not see in the hopes of saving their country. The path they were following was dangerous, but she was a hypocrite, wasn't she?

Hadn't she done the same thing not too long ago?

 

At twenty four, Pietro Maximoff walked away from the woman he loved, without ever telling her how much she had truly meant to him. When he returned, he told himself, he would tell her everything. He would lift her small frame into his arms, and promise to keep her safe, then he would kiss her and tell her he loved her, and maybe -just maybe- she would tell him that she loved him too.

But for now, he reached forward and took his sister's hand in his own, oblivious to the pain that would follow.

 

_**I think about the years I spent just passing through** _

 

_Two years._

List had betrayed them, and Pietro Maximoff had been treated like a lab rat for two years, only seeing his sister when the scientists would allow them to be together. Oh- they had gotten the tools they had been promised, but at a cost.

Out of many, only two survived the experience of having their genes forcibly mutated.

Only Pietro and Wanda had survived.

God- he had not seen Juliet for two years. Was she still waiting? Did she even still live in the apartment? Was she even still alive?

"-send out the twins."

He had to keep moving forward, and maybe someday he would see Juliet once more.

He just had to move forward.

 

_**I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you** _

 

At twenty five, almost twenty six, Pietro Maximoff had been betrayed too many times to count, so why not add another to the list?

That robot man who called himself Ultron? The one that they had thought would help them? Yeah, he had betrayed them, too- he had plans to wipe out the entire human race.

Well, Pietro rather liked being alive, thank you very much, and had no plans on dying anytime soon (or at least not without confessing to Juliet), so he did what he did best.

He rebelled.

Dashing through the streets of Sokovia (oh how he had missed his disaster of a hometown), Wanda held securely in his arms, Pietro came to a skidding halt in front of the corroding apartment complex he still considered home.

Would she still recognize him? He had changed in his two-year absence- his once brown hair had turned silver from the stress his body had undergone during his forced mutation, his body was scarred from the tests they had performed on him.

Taking a deep breath, Pietro Maximoff stepped forward.

 

_**But you just smile and take my hand / You've been there you understand** _

 

At twenty four, Juliet Potter was lonely, her apartment was empty.

Oh sure, she still lived there, she had her furniture and her beaten up television and her large overflowing bookshelves (Hermione had rubbed off on her more than she had originally known), but her apartment was empty of the warm feeling human contact had brought into her life, and it had been for two years.

Somebody knocked on the door, and Juliet was instantly alert and palming her wand.

Nobody had knocked on her door for nearing on two years now.

Moving forward, Juliet twisted the brass knob and allowed her door to swing open, hinges creaking.

Then she froze-

She knew who was standing before her. Oh, he had changed; his once chocolate brown hair had turned silver, yet it still carried that same shaggy wave as it had two years ago. His stubble more prominent, and body harnessing the lean muscles of a runner.

He had changed, yes, but Juliet knew those eyes; the silvery-blue eyes that had always sparkled with mischief and warmth. They were darker now, haunted by whatever had happened to him in the time that he had been gone, but she recognized the blue eyes of the man that she had tried not to love, but had done so anyway.

He was here.

" _Pietro_."

 

**_It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true._ **

 

She was still here; more drawn then she had been two years ago, but she was alive and she recognized him.

" _Pietro_."

For the first time in a long time (two years to be exact), a true smile spread across his face, and Pietro surged forward, wrapping Juliet's thin frame in a firm hug as she buried her face in his shoulder,

"You're back. _You've come back._ "

Pietro tightened his grip on her shaking body, nuzzling into her thick black curls. "I'm back, _Жизнь моя_ [2]. I'm sorry I ever left you alone, never again. Never again."

In his peripheral vision, Pietro saw a grinning Wanda excuse herself and slip into what had once been their apartment.

He told her everything. About how they had followed List, and how he had betrayed them and experimented on them. How they had joined Ultron in an attempted to save the human race, thinking it was the right way to go about it, and how they had fought the Avengers before they had been betrayed once more. How Ultron thought the best way to save the human race was to destroy it and that neither Pietro nor Wanda wanted anything to with his plans.

Then he felt Juliet pull away slightly to look him in the eye, before cupping his face in her hands and bringing him down for a hungry kiss.

 

_**Every long lost dream led me to where you are / Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars / Pointing me on my way into your loving arms** _

__

Pietro woke up the next morning naked, sheets scrunched up around his waist and surrounded by the musky scent of sex with a familiar head of black curls resting on his bicep.

Juliet was turned away from him, giving him a full view of her bare back lined with ragged silvery scars. He remembered running his fingers across them the night before, how Juliet's eyes had darkened momentarily before she promised to tell him later, and to keep doing what he was doing.

Pietro rolled over, wrapping his free arm around Juliet's naked waist and he nuzzled against the back of her pale neck marred only by the remains of his love bites.

His lover moaned quietly when his morning friend prodded her when he pressed up against her, before she twisted enough to look up at him with sleepy green eyes.

Looking down at Juliet's drowsy stare, Pietro felt a twinge of pain in his heart. Ultron was still out there, he still had plans to massacre the entirety of the human race, and Pietro had to stop him.

"I must leave." He said, reluctant releasing Juliet's much smaller frame and freeing his arm so that he could slide out of bed.

"Already?" She murmured, sitting up to rub sleep from her bottle-green eyes.

Pietro nodded as he rummaged around the discarded clothing scattered around Juliet's bedroom, "I will come back, _Красавица_ [3]. I just have something I need to finish." He pressed a kiss to Juliet's forehead, directly on the strange lightning-bolt scar that she had promised to tell him about someday.

Juliet stared, green eyes piercing, "Make sure you do."

 

_**This much I know is true / That God blessed the broken road / That led me straight to you** _

 

Pietro had not expected to team up with the Avengers of all people, but here he was, seated beside his sister amongst the people who had once been their enemies. He watched as his sister conversed quietly with the red cyborg with the mind powers -what was his name... oh yes, _Vision_!-.

The enemy of my enemy are my friends.

It would seem the old saying was true after all, and Ultron was definitely both of their enemy.

Sokovia was in danger, which put Juliet in danger, and that just would not do.

It was hard to believe that only a day ago he had woken up with her in bed, before having to leave her once again to save the world.

"You seem pretty high strung, speedy."

Pietro's shoulders stiffened when Stark spoke, and his blue eyes narrowed into a faint glare, even as he fiddled with the silver bracelet that Juliet had given him.

_"Take this. It'll protect you."_

_"I didn't know you were superstitious." He had said, even as he allowed her to clip in around his wrist, the small stag and lily charms catching his eye._

_Juliet had only smiled before stretching up to place a kiss to his scruffy cheek. "Don't do anything stupid, Love."_

"Is that from a woman?" Stark asked, looking at the charms in fascination. "Is she pretty?"

Pietro couldn't stop the small smile the spread across his face. "She is beautiful."

An understanding gleam entered Stark's gaze, "You too, huh?"

He didn't even have to ask Iron Man what he meant.

 

_**Yeah.** _

 

Something was about to happen. Juliet could just tell it by the magical tension in the air, and she didn't have to be a Seer to know that a lot of innocent people were going to die if they didn't leave immediately.

She rolled up her sleeve, studying the tattoo on her wrist.

A line intersecting a circle within a triangle.

The Deathly Hallows.

They were apart of her now, they had been ever since she woke up one morning after snapping the Elder Wand to its Mark tattooed on the underside of her wrist.

She could turn invisible at the drop of a hat, she could see and speak with the spirits of the dead, and she no longer needed a wand to channel her magic.

Her body was the conduct now.

Taking a deep breath, Juliet called her magic to the surface for the first time in nearly three years, it crackled excitedly as Juliet wielded it once more and with a roll of her shoulders, Juliet casted a wide-spread compulsion charm, ordering as many people as she could to get out.

However, not even the holder of the Deathly Hallows could compel an entire country (even a small one such as Sokovia), so if Juliet wanted to get everyone out she would have to move.

 

_**Now I'm just rolling home Into my lover's arms** _

 

She was _gone_.

Pietro stood in the doorway to Juliet's empty apartment, eyes scanning desperately for any sign of the familiar head of black curls. He coat was gone- did that mean she had gone out?

Where was she?

"She's gone." Pietro exclaimed breathlessly the moment he blurred into existence beside his sister, causing the Avengers to start in alarm. "Her apartment is empty."

Wanda blinked a few times, before understanding sparked in her brown eyes. "Pietro. All these people," She nodded towards the streams of people heading away from the danger. "I didn't get to them all."

"You think-"

"Someone else did it, yes." Wanda nodded, and Pietro felt a sense of relief. Did that mean Juliet had already left Sokovia? That she was already safe?

"Pietro! Wanda!"

Both twins spun around when a hauntingly familiar voice called them, and it was only thanks to his reflexes that Pietro managed to catch Juliet was she collided with him, smashing their lips together almost painfully. It took a moment, but Pietro closed his eyes and deepened the kiss, tightening his hold on her slim waist.

Juliet was the one who pulled away, spinning in his arms so that she could draw Wanda into a three person group hug.

"What are you still doing here?" Pietro finally asked, releasing his lover as his happiness melting away to heart-crushing alarm. " _Дорогой боже, тебе больно?_ [4]"

Juliet crossed her arms over her chest, bottle-green eyes sharpening, "I'm here to help." She told him bluntly.

" _No_ you aren't." Pietro told her, "It is dangerous here."

Juliet stepped away, glaring, before turning towards an Ultron sentry that had leapt towards the three of them, which exploded in a shower of sparks and twisted metal the moment her eyes landed on it.

She pivoted to face him once more, green eyes glowing with restrained power. "Anything else you wanted to say?" Juliet asked. Pietro could only gape, and a satisfied smirk curled Juliet's lips, "I thought not."

"You - You never told me you had powers." The speedster whined.

Juliet raised an eyebrow, "You never asked."

 

_**This much I know is true** _

 

Wanda Maximoff was twenty four, almost twenty five, when she felt the connection she had always had with her twin brother snap, she felt the pain he felt as bullets ripped through his body.

Surrounded by the silver bodies of Ultron's clones, Wanda screamed in agony as if she had been the one shot. Her powers exploding outwards as she dropped to her knees.

At twenty four Wanda felt the moment her brother died, and felt as if she had died with him.

 

_**That God blessed the broken road** _

 

Juliet dropped to her knees beside Pietro's still body, eyes never leaving his pale face and the bloody bullet holes that had torn through his body. She reached out with shaking hands, cupping his cheeks.

_His spirit was still there._

Pietro wasn't dead yet, not if Juliet had anything to say about it.

The archer that Pietro had sacrificed himself for had to scramble backwards when pure magic began to radiate from her body in visible waves. Her magic slid over the gaping wounds, prodded, assessed, and began to knit the damaged areas back together, helped along by Pietro's own super healing.

Her body shuddered once when Pietro took in a gasping breath, body arching and lips parting as his eyes flew open before fluttering shut once more.

He continued to breath, and Juliet let the tears she had been holding back fall. She had thought he was dead, that he had left her like everyone else she had ever cared about did. She had never felt relief as strong as the moment she had found the pulsing silvery-blue of Pietro's soul still holding on to the tether that kept it in his body.

The silver charm bracelet glinted in the light of the sun.

"Hey kid," She looked up from Pietro's unconscious face to see a blonde man -Captain America- place a hand on her shoulder, "We've got to get to the ship."

"What about Wanda?"

Captain America smiled gently, despite the grim and dust on his handsome face. "Don't worry, Vision is going after her."

With a nod, Juliet shifted away and let the blonde Avenger scoop Pietro's limp body into his arms.

 

_**That led me straight to you.** _

 

Pietro awoke to the steady beeping of a heart monitor and a weight on his left arm. Blinking his eyes open, he found himself staring at the white ceiling of a hospital room, his shirt gone and replaced with bandages wrapped around his torso.

Oddly enough, there was no pain, and last time Pietro checked getting shot fucking hurt.

Oh hey, he was still alive too.

He glanced to his left and a smile lifted the corners of his lips. Juliet, puffy-eyed and drooling, was asleep on his arm, her hair was falling out of the ponytail she must have pulled it in at some point and her cheek had a handprint on it (she must have fallen asleep with her cheek resting on her own fist).

Sitting up as well as he could, Pietro pressed a kiss to the crown of Juliet's head. "I love you, _Мой славный котёнок_ [5]."

"Mm- Love you too." Green eyes opened slowly, blinking up at him. "Just never scare me like that again."

Pietro chuckled, "Of course not, _Принцесса_. [6]"

 

**_That God blessed the broken road_ **

 

At twenty six, Pietro Maximoff held his firstborn child in his arms.

Alena Lily Maximoff [7] had been born two weeks before on the first day of summer, small but healthy. At two weeks old she already had her father's wavy chocolate brown hair, her mother's creamy skin tone, and her eyes were already changing from baby blue to her mother's bottle-green. He could see both his wife and his sister in his daughter's face shape and nose.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the infant's forehead, cradling her closer to his chest as he watched his exhausted wife sleep. The birth had been hard on Juliet Maximoff's (formerly Potter) small body (a result of the malnutrition she had suffered at the hands of her relatives), and he had nearly lost her.

But Juliet was a fighter, she had pulled through and given him a beautiful daughter.

At twenty six, Pietro had been a brother, an orphan, a rebel, and an Avenger. And now he was a father.

He thanked his lucky stars that he had fallen in love with Juliet, because he could no longer imagine his life without her.

 

_**That led me straight to you.** _

**Author's Note:**

> [1] Котёнок [ka-TYO-nak] kitten (Russian) 
> 
> [2] Жизнь моя [ZHEEZN’ ma-YA] my life (Russian) 
> 
> [3] Красавица [kra-SA-vee-tsa] beauty (Russian) 
> 
> [4] "Dear god, are you hurt?"
> 
> [5] Мой славный котёнок [MOY SLAV-neey ka-TYO-nak] my sweet kitten (Russian) 
> 
> [6] Принцесса [prin-TSE-sa] princess (Russian) 
> 
> Above translations are from funrussian . com or Google Translate 
> 
> [7] Alena Lily Maximoff: Alena is a female Russian name that means "light" / Lily is the name of Juliet's mother


End file.
